Currently, when a consumer would like to purchase or obtain a scarce or highly sought after item (e.g., a limited edition item such as a baseball card, tickets to a limited seating event, etc.), the consumer may have limited options for obtaining the item, primarily based on time and money. For example, for a ticket to a popular concert or an event with limited seating, a consumer must make the ticket purchase (e.g., through an online ticketing service) prior to the item selling out (which in some cases may occur in a matter of minutes), or may need to pay a third-party ticketing agency or a ticket scalper an amount of money well above face value in order to attend. For a scarce item up for auction, for example, a consumer would need to monetarily outbid everyone else within the allotted auction time window. Although wealth and speed may be considered cornerstones of commercialism, these sale mechanisms do not give a vendor a say in what the vendor wants to see in consumers of its items, and further, they do not give a consumer a chance to show the value the consumer may provide to the vendor if provided the item.
In the drawings, the leftmost digit(s) of a reference number may identify the drawing in which the reference number first appears.